Interview: Meg Wachter Talks Collaborating on Girl Crushes

I knew from the moment I received the third issue of Got a Girl Crush mag­a­zine that I would love it. After all, it has a Tues­day Bassen illus­tra­tion on the cov­er and inter­views with Fal­con­wright (ladies who pro­duce leather goods)  and the women of Stuff Mom Nev­er Told You (a great, infor­ma­tive pod­cast). The pub­li­ca­tion is a mix­ture of inter­views, pho­tog­ra­phy, illus­tra­tion, and per­son­al essays. Just the right amount to keep you interested.

I enjoyed read­ing it from cov­er to cov­er and learn­ing things about roller der­by, the impres­sive Rena Tom, hav­ing 6 sis­ters, and more. Meg Wachter, one of the founders of Got a Girl Crush, was kind enough to speak with me  about work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive, a dream inter­view, and then some!

My paper weight is a ceram­ic face by Tues­day Bassen. It felt appro­pri­ate to use it!

For those who aren’t privy, can you briefly describe how Got a Girl Crush (blog, mag­a­zine) came to be? Was there an a‑ha moment, or was it a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion of both your interests?

Andrea Cheng (in San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia) and I (in Brook­lyn, New York) start­ed Got a Girl Crush, the blog, in 2009 after crush­ing on each oth­er’s tastes and inter­ests via TUMBLR for some time. A lot of our own posts and re-blogs revolved around women doing awe­some things, so nat­u­ral­ly GAGC start­ed as a catch-all blog for both of us to share our admi­ra­tion for oth­er awe­some ladies. The mag­a­zine was born out of my hav­ing too much down­time/free-time as a free­lancer and need­ed a cre­ative project to pour myself into and, as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, proved to be a great tool to approach women I admired that I want­ed to pho­to­graph and get to know better.

A strength of Got a Girl Crush is all of the voic­es fea­tured in it (from both inter­view and inter­vie­wees). How do you tie the whole issue togeth­er with so many dif­fer­ent people?

The mag­a­zine has real­ly turned into a venn dia­gram of con­nect­ing tal­ent­ed illus­tra­tors, pho­tog­ra­phers, writ­ers with oth­er inspir­ing, self-start­ing women. Some­times it starts from pick­ing some­one to fea­ture, oth­er times it’s ask­ing the cre­ative ladies we’d like to be involved who they’re cur­rent­ly crush­ing. I think the over­all tie that binds is the sis­ter­hood of explor­ing what oth­er women are doing to inde­pen­dent­ly to empow­er them­selves and oth­ers. Or just fuck­ing doing it! Broad­ly speak­ing, media trains women to be envi­ous or oth­er wom­en’s fame, wealth, bod­ies, etc. It’s obvi­ous­ly not healthy and it pits us against each oth­er. We need to encour­age and cham­pi­on each oth­er to recon­di­tion our­selves as women and the girls that look up to us. “Crush” is an inter­change­able, all-encom­pass­ing pow­er word.

What do you describe the pre­vail­ing themes of issue #3? I got the sense of dual­i­ty, cou­pling, mir­ror­ing… is that some­thing you were think­ing about?

It’s fun­ny you noticed that because real­ly there’s nev­er been an over­ar­ch­ing theme…but some­times it mag­i­cal­ly con­spires that way! There has nev­er been a set deci­sion mak­ing process for the blog since it’s a col­lab­o­ra­tion across the coun­try, but the mag­a­zine takes some more care­ful cura­tion to keep it broad and well-bal­anced (as to not have too many ladies who are design­ers or musi­cians, etc). But I have been schem­ing on themes for future issues…

My very own Fal­con­wright pouch. I use it everyday!

What’s your advice for work­ing with a part­ner and col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­ers? How do you pick who you’d like to work with?

The best part of run­ning your own blog/magazine is that you call the shots! I’ve nev­er been a boss-lady before and for some­thing that’s ulti­mate­ly so pos­i­tive and fun. Col­lab­o­ra­tion and brain­storm­ing is excit­ing as you’re con­stant­ly learn­ing about new peo­ple and things. I think Andrea and I bal­ance each-oth­er well in that she leans towards more design­ers and women involved in fash­ion, where­as I have more of a fem­i­nist and activist slant. I tend to get over­ly-excit­ed and want to sharethis­now where­as Andrea is metic­u­lous (as she is styl­ish) and keeps me in check to make sure our con­tent and fact-check­ing is A+. Oth­er that our ini­tial team­ing-up, con­trib­u­tors are also friends or ladies we admire that we just straight-up ask to be involved. After awhile you sort of get a sense of who was the same work ethos as you, or who com­pli­ments you well.

Your mag­a­zine uses pho­tos as well as some select illus­tra­tors. Who takes on the role of the art direc­tor? How do you decide which sto­ries will use illustration?

I’d say in this issue, our design­er, Celeste Pre­vost, real­ly knocked it out of the park. Celeste is a phe­nom­e­nal design­er and all-around chill-as-hell lady that has a sense of clean and cool style. I still can’t get over how much this issue tru­ly legit­imized what we’ve been doing from as a for-fun thing to some­thing that’s pret­ty legit.

Who is your dream per­son to interview/feature in the magazine?

I’m a bro­ken record at this point when­ev­er I get asked this, but BJORK IF YOU’RE READING THIS HIT US UP!

Is issue #4 already in the works? If so, what can we expect from it?

The wish-list has begun for issue 4! It’s def­i­nite­ly going to have a few more hands involved than just 3 of us com­pil­ing this together–so I’m def­i­nite­ly excit­ed to have more out­side input for new ladies and ideas I’d nev­er thought of before. Shootin for it to be out Sum­mer 2015!

Thanks, Meg!

Buy the third issue of Got a Girl Crush here. You won’t regret it!